Biased social transmission in Drosophila oviposition choice

摘要: Within a group, animals adjust individual decisions to environmental conditions both through their own experience and by interacting with other animals. How individuals balance social vs. personal information may have deep impact on fitness, this might be particularly relevant when interact conspecifics that carry different, or even conflicting, information. In animals, conformist strategy of learning, defined the tendency disproportionately adopt most commonly encountered information, appears more widespread than previously thought. Here, we investigated whether females fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, conform oviposition site choice cues coming from conspecifics. Groups naive “observer” flies were exposed two media (banana strawberry flavored) “demonstrator” trained prefer one media. All then tested for preference. The preference observer was highly sensitive composition demonstrator presence small proportion oviposit banana enough induce biased medium. Our results suggest D. melanogaster combine choose sites rather showing conformity.